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Showing results for tags 'ichnofossil'.
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Hi all! I found a rock that commanded my attention while goofing off at a friend's house along the TN River. I thought I saw trace fossil like marks on the large rocks we were crawling on but they were very worn. Then I spied a much smaller piece, covered in algae and plant matter, that had very pronounced markings like I was seeing on the large rocks but also some broken lines that were very curious. The markings extend down the side of the broken rock and there are some deep "dotted" lines that are at near 90 degree angles as well as some shallow "dotted" lines that follow the natural curve of the broken rock as well as follow a depression that runs the length of the rock. I'd love it if someone who recognizes more about this rock could weigh in on it. It was found across the river from a well known Cherokee settlement, so the idea that it is an artifact in addition to a trace fossil has crossed my mind. It was found in TN, south of Knoxville, along the TN River. The rock formation it was found in is Ordovician dolomite. Thanks to anyone taking the time to look at and think over my find!
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Took me a little while to post this trip report, I'm always a busy person. This trip is from October 3rd, 2020 in Ellsworth County, Kansas at a reservoir. The predominant formation at the site I visited is Kiowa formation; which is known for marsh and delta environments in the early Cretaceous (Albian). I found some interesting things and I'll show below. Possibly some carbonized wood materials. Lignite or coal? It was flaky and would crumble if touched. It left some black powders on my hands after handling it. I found several large pieces of them together and partly encased in concretions. Putting them together would make them about a meter and half long. Piece #1: Piece #2: Backside of #2. Notice the clutches of concretions. ...continued on the next post.
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I have these fossils here from the early Jurassic, Northamptonshire. I was wondering if the one on the left could possibly be a coprolite, or some other fossil, although most likely not. It does stick to the tounge. I also have these bumps on bits of rock, and was wondering if they could possibly be due to bivalves? And lastly, a slightly curved thing that has equal thickness which I have no clue what it is. Many thanks
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Hey all. Found this sort of trace fossil I'm assuming, in some shale shelves. My initial thought was Gryphaea but it lacks the proper lines and structure to be a shell. Now I'm leaning towards Zoophycos. Can anyone confirm if it is zoophycos, and help with the morphology of this specific find? I'm under the impression that zoophycos morphology changed throughout the ages, and I'm trying to reverse ID the age of rocks I found it in since the geological maps of my area are extremely vague and lack detail. Let me know if more angles are required for this ID. Cheers.
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I recently moved into a house with some friends on our university campus, and this nice cabinet was included right past the front door. So of course I had to put together a little museum! These are just the fossils I have on me at this time, but I’ll probably pick some more up to add next time I visit home or if I go on a hunt soon. I tried adding some fun blurbs with a couple that I felt had some really cool information hiding in them. If there’s any specific part you want to see, or if you have any fun suggestions, let me know!
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Thought I would share some of my Acrocanthosaurus tracks in my collection from Texas. These are from the Glen Rose Formation. Anyone who has dino tracks, please feel free to post them here on this thread too...would love to see them! The associated pair are big...both over 20 inches long.
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- acrocanthosaurus
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Hey everyone just wanted to check in with you all and see how you are doing. I also wanted to inquire about these Worm Borings/Concretions, and what our members consensus might be. Maybe our resident concretion collector @Ruger9a would be able to help me out. Anyway, here are the pictures: Here is a photo of the excavation site:
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- california
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Found in the southern Adirondacks.. Northeastern Lake George. At about 600-700 feet above sea level. The stone itself measures about 12x14 cm.
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Hi, newer member and fossil newbie, went on one of my first fossil hunting trips recently at a locality I learned about in part from this forum, so thanks. Found a piece of stone with (what I'm 90% sure is) most of a trilobite on the left, but the stone also had a rounded streak through the middle. Does anyone know if this some form of trace fossil, or just awkward shaping of the stone? The piece is from the middle Devonian and Needmore formation of West Virginia, and the streak is roughly four centimeters long.
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I stopped by a new road cut today to see if it would be a viable hunting spot. One of the things I found there was this interesting piece. Maybe an Ichnofossil? Some type of burrow or feeding trails? According to the USGS map, the cut is Salem Limestone which is Upper Mississippian in age. Any ideas? This small piece that I picked up came from a larger slab that was over a meter wide. The whole rock was covered in these and they are in between the layers. The big ones are only about 1cm across and most are half that. A photo from the field... This is a picture of it wet...
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I'm rather embarrassed but i need some ID help on something I purchased a few years ago. My chagrin is because I usually am very good at labeling purchases or at least taking a pic of a label if the seller does not provide one. I have this piece of shale that has some fossil claw or fin marks on it that I recall are swimming traces. The shale comes from the Triassic or Jurassic of the Newark Supergroup in Pennsylvania. Any help is appreciated!
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Whenever I bring home a new batch of fossils, I pull out my UV rock lamp. Why? Some fossils glow in the dark, but not in a uniform way. Variations in the mineral composition make for a variety of colors, even when the specimen seems fairly uniform in color in daylight. This can make small, hidden details really stand out. Case in point: This afternoon I was putting away some petrified wood I'd collected awhile back. I pulled out my black light to examine them because some of the wood from this site shows a rainbow of color under UV. This one particular piece was mostly orange under UV, though in camera the hues look different. What really got my attention, however, were a few really vibrant spots on one side. Insect traces! The petrified wood chip is only about 8 cm long. Even with a magnifier, some of the small details are hard to spot. I never would have spotted them in daylight, but they were super bright with the UV. Another box I was sorting through this week contained impressions of brachiopods and trilobites in plain, white limestone. It can be hard to see the contours in the matrix, but they show up much differently under the UV. Finally, UV light can be used to identify fossil mollusks whose patterns have bleached away. About 60% of fossil shells fluoresce and some species have been described based on the residual patterns made visible under ultraviolet light. Note: To photograph these, I used a Convoy UV LED flashlight. I set my camera on a tripod for a 4 second exposure at f/22, with ISO set to 1600. I had my DSLR's white balance set for daylight.
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Hi Is this ichnofossil? I found a specimen under an overturned tree so I don't know what time it is. This trace is on both sides in the same place.
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I think I am interpreting this correctly. Seems that this 2 B yo track is being interpreted as a slime mold trace on a paleosoil. https://m.phys.org/news/2019-10-ancient-fossils-reveal-fresh-clues.html
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- 2billion years old
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Zoophycos are swirling patterns in silt stone that may cover acres of flat ground. These trace fossils occur on the sea floor from the Ordovician to present, but no specific animal has been definitively identified. It is believed that they are created by movement and feeding patterns of polychaete worms.
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I got this from an expo today, it was collected in Gill MA and supposed to be Anomoepus. The rock is about 6 inches by 4 inches. I'm not remotely familiar with tracks so hoping someone here can verify it. Pictures are with and without flash, let me know if you need other angles or anything to ID. Thank you!
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One of my favorite fossil types. Dinosaur eggs come in all shapes and sizes — from an oval as small as a thumb, to a sphere as big as a basketball. These fossils are often faked by the hundreds, if not thousands, in Chinese factories (China is also the world's richest source of true dinosaur eggs). However, there are also many natural-occurring objects mistaken as dinosaur eggs such as concretions or even fortuitously-shaped rocks. Despite these hurdles, dinosaur eggs remain one of the most desirable of all fossils. NOTE: Dinosaur egg and eggshells, by their nature as an ichnofossil, are challenging for private collectors to identify. None of the IDs I provide here are acceptable on a scientific level as I lack the tools to examine the cross section slices of my eggshells. However, for the sake of documentation I will still provide accurate names and locality here to the best of my ability. First up are my Oviraptorid eggs "Common" Name: Oviraptor egg Elongatoolithus sp. 71 - 66 mya | late Cretaceous Nanxiong Basin, Guangdong "Common" Name: Citipati egg Macroolithus yaotunensis 71 - 66 mya | late Cretaceous Nanxiong Basin, Guangdong Length: 8.78 inches (Note: Has composited eggshells) "Common" Name: Oviraptorid(small type) Nest Elongatoolithus sp. 71 - 66 mya | late Cretaceous Nanxiong Formation Guangdong
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Controversial fossils suggest life began to move 2.1 billion years ago. New Scientist, February 11, 2019 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2193557-controversial-fossils-suggest-life-began-to-move-2-1-billion-years-ago/ The paper is: Abderrazak El Albani, M. Gabriela Mangano, Luis A. Buatois, Stefan Bengtson, Armelle Riboulleau, Andrey Bekker, Kurt Konhauser, Timothy Lyons, Claire Rollion-Bard, Olabode Bankole, Stellina Gwenaelle Lekele Baghekema, Alain Meunier, Alain Trentesaux, Arnaud Mazurier, Jeremie Aubineau, Claude Laforest, Claude Fontaine, Philippe Recourt, Ernest Chi Fru, Roberto Macchiarelli, Jean Yves Reynaud, François Gauthier-Lafaye, and Donald E. Canfield, 2019, Organism motility in an oxygenated shallow-marine environment 2.1 billion years ago PNAS published ahead of print February 11, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1815721116 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/05/1815721116 Yours, Paul H.
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- fb2 member
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Good afternoon everybody! During a fieldtrip in Silesia (Poland) last year I visited a rather large spoiltip looking for plant fossils. The spoils left behind by the mining company indicate they still use (or used) the old method to separate the coal from the surrounding debris, allowing the coal to be 'baked' (e. g. the presence of pyrite that turns into sulphuric acid -h2so4- under the influence of wind and rain, ...) something typical for the majority of spoiltips I visited in Western Europe. Unfortunately I have no detailed geological data on the age of the debris in the spoiltip but there is no doubt this is Silesian (upper Carboniferous) in age. I even tend to think this is Westphalian in age based on the fossils found, but let's keep it to upper Carboniferous to be sure. I found several species of Lepidodendron, some Eusphenopterids, both Stigmaria ficoides and S. stellata, etc... And this never-seen-before 'thing'. My initial thought was that this could be some sort stem/branch but, in my 20 years of collecting Paleozoic plants, I have never seen the repetative triangular pattern that covers the branch (or tube if you like). Perhaps this could be some sort of tracefossil? Since my ichnofossil-knowledge is extremely limited someone here can help me out? The height of the 'tubes' varies between 2 and 3mm. Have a nice day! Sven
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This is a retcon of an earlier post I had. Cambrian fossils aren't something one thinks of when they think of Maryland fossil hunting, and perhaps for good reason. The Cambrian rocks of the state are poorly exposed, those few areas where they do outcrop usually being gobbled up in urban sprawl. Compared to sites elsewhere like in Utah or York, Pennsylvania, the Maryland Cambrian is also rather barren. You could probably count on both hands the number of macrospecies in the entire early and middle Cambrian section of the state. But this rarity only makes collecting in it that much more interesting! Luckily for me I'm pretty close by most of these formations, so I have a decent knowledge of the area and outcrops, but even then it took a decent amount of time researching and scouting to find a site. The most recent formation I visited was the Araby Formation. Up until the mid 20th century the Araby was considered part of the Antietam Sandstone further west in the Blue Ridge, but after some more studies done on the formation it was found that it's lithological character was distinct enough to warrant it being a separate unit. Whereas the Antietam is a white quartz sandstone (much like the Oriskany I posted about yesterday) deposited in a beach-like environment, the Araby was deposited in deeper water (compared to the Antietam) and is more a mixture of siltstones, shales, phyllites, and slates. Together with the Antietam the Araby has some of the oldest fossils in the state dating back to the early Cambrian period some 540 million years ago. This makes it the oldest formation in the Frederick Valley. For those that don't know the Frederick Valley is a predominantly limestone syncline in west central Maryland (I consider it western Maryland, but most people probably wouldn't). At it's core is the early Ordovician Grove Limestone (which has practically no fossils), and on it's flanks are the late Cambrian Frederick Limestone (fossiliferous in parts, but those parts are very rare) and finally the Araby Formation. The Araby takes up positions along the far flanks of the valley, and it's eastern boundary with the metamorphic rocks of the Westminster Terrane marks the Martic Fault (no Washingtonians you don't need to worry about a San Andrea, from what I've read the Martic has been inactive for a long, long time). Due to it's sediment type and that of the surrounding rocks, the Araby is also a minor ridge forming unit, holding up the series of hills that flank Frederick Valley's eastern edge. These hills are nicely visible from the grounds of Monocacy National Battlefield, which is also of interest for marking the site of the northernmost Confederate victory (July 9, 1864 for those who're curious) in the Civil War. This ridge forming aspect means that, although very thin and covering a very small area, the Araby Formation has multiple exposures throughout the Frederick Valley. Some of the better ones are visible along I-70 just east of it's crossing over Monocacy River (an MGS team found some trilobites there) and MD-355 as you drive through the woods before hitting Araby Church Road (I believe the namesake for the formation is actually the Araby Church). In terms of fossils the Araby is almost exclusively dominated by the trace fossil Skolithos linearis, an annelid worm burrow. Other fossils found in it, however, include echinoderms and Olenellus sp. trilobites. As another aside the Cash Smith Shale, once held as an independent formation, also has trilobites and I believe inarticulate brachiopods reported from it, however it is no longer considered an independent formation but rather a member of the Araby Formation. Almost all of my fossils were the worm burrows, still cool but for everyone's sake I won't constantly repeat what they are this time around. Image 1: The largest burrow I've found. I originally thought it was a genal spine from a trilobite due to it's size. Image 2: Cross section of a burrow, outlined by the iron oxide stain. Image 3: Another burrow, this one roughly outlined by the iron oxide. Image 4: The large tubular structure covered in iron oxide (you might be noticing a pattern here with the oxides and burrows. I can't say definitively if they're connected in some way, but oftentimes you'll find the one with the other).
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Hellow Guys, I have the doubt, the trace fossil of the picture is a rhizocorallium, diplocraterion or taenidium? Or none of those three?
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Hello all! I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon today in the warm-but-not-too-hot sunshine at Mimico Creek in Toronto, ON (Georgian Bay Formation, Upper Ordovician), and I have a couple of things that I'd like you to have a look at: Picture #1: A view of Mimico Creek Pictures #2 and #3: A bivalve and a possible graptolite - what do you think? Pictures #4 and #5: An ichnofossil - do you think it could be Cruziana, or is it something else? Thanks so much for your help!!! Monica
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From the album: FreeRuin's Finds
It looks the part of a Batrachopus footprint (missing a toe) with the proper size and location but I cannot say for sure. Hartford Basin Portland Formation Western Massachusetts
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